The Accretionary Wedge #60 – Call for Posts – Momentous Discoveries in Geology
"There are lots of sayings out there about how science is a journey with many steps and paths or a giant building made of many small blocks that contribute to the enormity of an entire field. All of these cliches are pretty much pointing out the same thing. Namely, that the knowledge base in each field is composed of the work of thousands of people all contributing a little bit and slowly building an understanding of the natural world. This is very true, however, some of these contributions are bigger than others, and geology is no exception. Over the history of geology there have been many major discoveries that advanced the science, from the original work of Hutton, Lyell, Steno and Darwin, to more modern revelations. Each discovery has in some way altered our perception of how the Earth works and either opened new avenues of research or provided previously unknown constraints and laws. Therefore, for this wedge the topic will be momentous discoveries in geology or its sub-disciplines that you feel have altered or shaped our understanding of how the Earth works, or opened new doors into research that had never been considered before. The discovery you choose does not have to be universally recognized as momentous but should be in your opinion"
I've been out of Geology for awhile and was tempted to skip this one but then I thought about a book that I've recently read - well actually its two different books but were by the same author: Walter Alvarez. And when I first read them they really made an impact on me because it really got me rethinking things and feeling like his research made a lot of sense to me and I might have to change my opinion on how the dinosaurs died off.
The Walter Alvarez first book is 'T-Rex and the Crater of Doom' (1997 but now available on kindle) and the other is 'The Mountains of Saint Francis' (2009 also available on Kindle). What I really liked about these books was the way he wrote them so that a lay person could read them and follow his reasoning. He was interested in the K/T Cretaceous Tertiary boundary and how plate tectonics could be applied to it in Italy. (Plate tectonics is another topic I was tempted to write about because when I was in school -mid 70's it was just coming out and there was a lot of controversy over it - but at the time it was not in my textbooks and not always taught.Now all the textbooks are rewritten applying that theory) I guess that was why I was reading the book The Mountains of Saint Francis since Alvarez was such a major force in getting plate tectonics widely accepted. But that was not what this post is going to be about.
What I really liked was the way he proposed a major meteorite hit the earth and that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. The impact site was Chicxulub Crater. Here's the link to Wikipedia about Walter_Alvarez and here's an article about the K/T_extinction_event that tells about it better than I can. What I really like was in the books Alvarez tells about how the theories evolved and were constantly revised based on new research. Now I feel geologist have to think about asteroids as a possible explanation for mass extinctions that have occurred in the past. What really got me thinking was I'm used to thinking that geologic events happen over millions and millions of years but as Alvarez pointed when a meteorite hits its basically instantaneous and so not all geologic processes happen over time - some can be quite rapid. Making me have to change the way I think about things to me makes it a momentous discovery and that was why I would like for it to be include in AW#60.
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